Smells Like GOP Desperation in Georgia

Yesterday morning, Fulton County Judge Kevin Farmer held a hearing. Republicans filed a lawsuit claiming that a Fulton County plan to keep four election offices open over the weekend so people could turn in their absentee ballots ran afoul of Georgia law. They cited a provision in the Georgia code that was about drop boxes in support of their position.

Anyone with half an ounce of good sense and a basic understanding of the law would have never filed the lawsuit Republicans brought late in the night on Friday. Early voting ended on Friday in Georgia. But Fulton County offices weren’t open for an illegal continuation of early voting; they were open so that people voting absentee could drop off their ballots in person rather than putting them in the mail at this late date. Absentee ballots must be received in Georgia by the time the polls close. Under Georgia law, absentee voters are permitted to “personally mail or personally deliver” their ballot.

Georgia law requires that drop boxes be closed when early voting ends. And Fulton County and presumably all of Georgia did that. The offices that remained open this weekend permitted voters to turn in their absentee ballots just like voters have always been able to if they didn’t want to mail them in—in person. That’s clearly permitted by Georgia law, and nothing says you can’t do that the weekend before the election. In fact, that’s when it makes the most sense to turn your ballot in by hand, especially given concerns about the postal system and slow delivery of ballots.

The Georgia RNC, nonetheless, made blatant claims of illegal conduct by Democrats that were widely shared on social media, claiming Fulton County was illegally using drop-off boxes to collect ballots when that was not the case. Demonstrably not the case, and they knew it.

Their case didn’t last long. Judge Farmer dispensed with it quickly and with what looked like a hint of mostly well-contained annoyance that a baseless lawsuit that could have been filed during regular business hours was filed late at night, with RNC lawyers repeatedly trying to engage him in impermissible ex-parte communications. Ex-parte means something like “one side only.” Lawyers aren’t permitted to speak with a judge about a pending lawsuit without the other side present; doing so is an ethical breach.

Fulton officials say they received just over 100 ballots at these four locations on Saturday, most of them in the more politically and demographically diverse part of the county, despite Republican claims that making voting more accessible favored Democrats.

You can watch the hearing with Judge Kevin Farmer:

[Note to the federal judiciary: This is how it’s done, folks. Cameras in the courtroom work.]

The Judge denied the request to prevent in-person drop off of absentee ballots after making it clear that the RNC didn’t understand the law. Pro Tip for lawyers: Don’t file a frivolous lawsuit in the middle of the night.

Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, took to social media to make clear that the Judge’s interpretation of the law was correct.

Saying Republicans didn’t understand the law is a charitable assessment of what happened here. Why would they have done this when their lawsuit was clearly frivolous? Is it just incompetence? Georgia RNC lawyer Alex Kaufman is, after all, a “business attorney” and “involved citizen,” not an election law expert.

But of course, it’s not incompetence, or at least not incompetence alone. Republicans continue to work all the angles to create a fake election fraud narrative. We watched them do it in 2020, and they are doing it again. It turns out that what happened in Fulton County was a press release disguised as a lawsuit.

The Trump-Vance campaign sent this out—leaving out the fact that the Judge had ruled against them and that none of this was true. Nonetheless, they claimed Georgia counties that accepted ballots on Saturday broke the law. When Trump loses Georgia, and they challenge the results, expect this to play prominently. And it’s not about winning cases, that much is clear, because this was and is a stone-cold loser. It’s about riling up the base, it’s about destroying trust in the result of the election, maybe it’s even about fomenting outbreaks of violence like 2020.

Claims of fraud proliferate despite the truth and the Judge’s decision. Eric Daugherty, a Florida journalist, posted this.

Michael Whatley, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, posted this. Whatley is the RNC’s former general counsel, in other words a lawyer. He should know better and likely does. But the truth continues to be no barrier to trying to win an election, by hook or by crook.

Sunday morning starts with a healthy dose of optimism. I never like to get too far ahead of myself, and I do not go up and down with the polls. But it's hard not to be buoyed up by the news that Kamala Harris is doing better than expected in Iowa, according to a highly respected poll which has her inching ahead of Trump in the final days of the election. And if you haven't already seen it, you’ll want to watch her Saturday Night Live spot last night. Keep Kamala, and carry on-ala.

We go into this election with momentum and energy and with great love for our country. I see it everywhere. Martin Luther King once said in a different context, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” That’s what we have on our side in this election. We are all doing what we can, and now that we are this close to election day, I feel the anxiety falling away, and what I see is Americans out working their hardest to make sure we keep the Republic.

One of my college housemates running a Democratic HQ in rural Pennsylvania. Just amazing!

So, don’t let the people around you be deceived by fake claims of fraud. Let’s make it happen.

We’re in this together,

Joyce